Many assets, such as utility lines (e.g., power, gas, water, sewage, communication, military/security, etc.) and other infrastructure assets owned by both government and private enterprises, are buried underground. When excavating (e.g., digging, grading, demolishing, cultivating, augering, blasting, boring, and the like), excavation equipment and underground assets that the excavator may not know were present can be damaged. Such damage may cause a disruption of service to customers, expensive repairs, and costly litigation, all of which can additionally lead to loss of reputation for the excavator. In extreme cases, such accidents may even lead to injury or death.
Before excavating, in some areas an excavator may submit a dig ticket to a call center requesting clearance to excavate at a specific location. Indeed, in many regions, excavators are required by law to submit dig tickets and receive approval before excavating. The call center receiving the dig tickets is generally in communication with various asset owners and must contact the asset owners to determine if there are underground assets at each excavation location. If there are no underground assets within a determined proximity of each excavation location, the dig ticket may simply be approved, thereby allowing the excavator to excavate at the excavation location. However, if there are underground assets proximate (e.g., within a determined buffer zone) of the excavation location, a locator may need to travel to the excavation location and mark the location of the underground assets to allow the excavator to avoid excavating within a buffer zone of any underground asset.
Generally, implementations employ one of two variants of this system. In the first variant, the call centers employ Geographic Information System (“GIS”) systems that include land based data (e.g., map information) and underground asset data mapped to each other. Each call center generally employs an independent GIS system. However, underground asset data is often not up to date even though each call center may frequently check with the several underground asset owners (e.g., utilities and government offices) for record maintenance. Additionally, land based data in GIS systems may be out of date if not constantly updated. Thus, even though a call center may try to keep their GIS system current, conventional GIS systems may fail to reflect recent changes in either land based data or underground assets data, leading to excavators damaging underground assets. In the second variant, a GIS system may be individually maintained by each asset owner (utilities, etc.) and a call center may only dispatch the excavation request to these asset owners who in turn will determine if the excavation affects their assets. Thus, in the second variant, the call center only acts as a conduit between the excavator and asset owners.
Further, in much of the world, addressing of parcels of land is inconsistent or nonexistent and many excavators may not have access to sophisticated sensing equipment such as Global Positioning System (“GPS”) sensors. This often makes it difficult for a call center to locate an excavation location indicated on a dig ticket even on their GIS system. Even if the excavation location can be found on the GIS system, it may be difficult for a locator to travel to the excavation location to manually expect the excavation location or to mark the location of underground assets.
While systems and methods are described herein by way of example and embodiments, those skilled in the art recognize that systems and methods for managing underground assets are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood that the drawings and description are not intended to be limiting to the particular form disclosed. Rather, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. Any headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used herein, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.